


Compromiser

by seekingferret



Series: Uncompromising [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3463370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/pseuds/seekingferret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons, uncompromising and compromised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compromiser

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



She didn't see him brought into the medical lab, which was probably for the best. The first warning Simmons had was when Agent Harris put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her to her feet from behind, then insistently hissed "One of my men was shot by Coulson. He's got some sort of poison. Can you treat it?"

A flood of emotions rushed through her head. She's better than most of the doctors HYDRA has, but for the most part they don't involve her in medical treatment. She's not entirely certain why. It could be because they think she's more valuable doing research, or because they don't trust her with the health of their agents, or because they don't care that much if their agents survive the treatment. It could be all of the above. Unlike her clear understanding of SHIELD's mostly-comprehensible moral code, she hasn't made sense of HYDRA's guiding values. 

In any case, if they're asking her now, there must be some knowledge they think she has about the case that they can't get elsewhere. And there might be. There are a number of poisons SHIELD uses, though none of them are routinely carried as ammunition, so Coulson must have had some particular reason to want Harris's guy poisoned. She nodded her head and followed Harris into the medbay, still trying to regain control of her racing heart. 

The man was a hard case. She remembered him from the HYDRA lunch room, a handsome boy a couple of years younger than her, with pale white skin and thin, expressive eyebrows. His skin had turned an almost lizard-like green, and a ventilator was forcing air into his gasping lungs. She recognized the toxic agent immediately, autonomically, as she put a surgical mask over her face. It presented a whole range of challenges to her that she felt unequipped to deal with. 

She was at once furious and pleased with Coulson for... for trusting her to decide what to do. That was the only way she could read his choice to use that particular toxin on a HYDRA agent. There were many choices a rational person might make given the knowledge Simmons had of the situation, but there was only one choice that she would make. She would save his life. Even though it would invariably leave one more HYDRA agent alive to threaten her friends, even though it would invariably give the HYDRA agents monitoring her constantly knowledge of a half dozen medical techniques she had thus far kept secret from them, even though it would draw her deeper into the web HYDRA had carefully spun for her. Because she believed in oaths, and she believed that Phil Coulson sent her into HYDRA knowing who she was and what she was capable of doing to protect her oaths. 

As the greenish skin whispered away into clean, pale flesh, the man on the bed hissed a word of gratitude at her. "I owe you one, Simmons," he said. Simmons wondered what that was worth.


End file.
